mundyewalsh The Creative Women interview series chats to women from Ireland and beyond in creative fields, and explores what is at the root of their artistic drive. Creative thinking is fundamental for a fulfilled life, and so understanding and cultivating it through shared experiences, challenges and achievements helps us thrive.
Tatyana Feeney is a children’s book author-illustrator. She grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she received her BA in Art History. She also holds a BA in Children’s Illustration from Glyndwr University and an MA in Illustration from the University of Hertfordshire. She now makes her home in Trim, Co Meath.
Her book illustrations are created using printmaking with added media including collage and watercolour. Her books include Small Bunny’s Blue Blanket, Little Owl’s Orange Scarf, and Small Elephant’s Bathtime (all from Oxford University Press) and Socks for Mr. Wolf, Eva and the Perfect Rain and Mr Wolf Goes to the Ball (The O’Brien Press). Theme in Yellow, written by Carl Sandburg, and Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily
Dickinson are both poetry picture books with Cameron Kids.
Her most recent book is The Dragon Slayer.
How did you get started in your craft and what continues to inspire you?
I got started in illustration in kind of a roundabout way. I had studied art in college but then worked in a pre-school for several years. Being in an environment with lots of children’s books and opportunities for being creative made me realize that I wanted to use my art background to make picture books.
I found a course in Wales that was specific to picture book illustration. There was also a strong printmaking tradition at the college, so it was really a good fit for me.
Once I finished my degree, it was a case of sending stories and illustrations to publishers. I was lucky to have some success after not too many years of rejection.
Although I work mainly through monoprinting, I love trying other kinds of printmaking. I recently made a Riso print book and a fluorescent ink book. Both projects were challenging because I was outside of my comfort zone in creating the art, but that is also what made them interesting.
What is your process from ideation to finished product?
My illustrations are mainly created through monoprinting.
For any idea I am working on, an individual piece or an entire picture book, I begin with sketches.
I do keep lots of sketchbooks, but these are usually for writing down ideas or making visual notes of things I would like to develop.
When I am working on my final sketches for any project, I like to use regular A3 paper, the kind you would use in a photocopier. It doesn’t feel as precious, and it is thin enough to use on a light box for stencil making.
When I am happy with the sketches, I make stencils of individual pieces from the illustration and use them to make monoprints.
I make lots of trees and leaves so, as an example, if my illustration has a tree, I will make a monoprint of the tree, usually trying out a few different colours and textures.
When the prints have dried, I scan them into Photoshop and will then decide which tree works best in my illustration.
What I love about monoprinting is the unexpected nature of it. I always have an idea of how I want the piece to look, but often, once I am using the inks and trying different textures, there are “happy accidents”, and these may change the final outcome completely.
I also love trying different textures and thinking about ways that can happen and how they can be used in a meaningful way in my artwork.
I used to create each illustration as one complete piece, which meant that any mistakes in the final art were a disaster! Now, I think to the delight of my publishers, and certainly in the interest of being flexible, I am able to use Photoshop, which means I don’t make any illustration in its entirety on paper. I am sorry about that, but I do like being able to move things around, try trees of different colours, or put different clothes on the characters, so in that way, it is a little like playing with paper dolls.
How do you maintain resilience during difficult periods? What has been your greatest obstacle so far?
This is such an interesting profession to have. Sometimes I feel really lucky that I am able to do what I love for a living, but the downside (not to mention the financial aspect) is that you are really putting yourself into the world for acceptance or rejection.
I have been an illustrator for a while now, and I guess because artwork is personal, while the difficult periods do always feel bad, I now know that there is usually a positive around the corner, so I try to focus on that.
And sometimes moving on to a new idea is a good way for me to remember to enjoy the process and not think too much about the negative.
I think my greatest obstacle has been lack of time, just having other parts of my life take from the time I can spend on illustration and particularly on experimental illustration.
This seems to be ongoing, and I manage it sometimes better than others.
Imposter Syndrome can be a hurdle sometimes creatively, has this ever affected you? Does being a woman influence your creativity?
Yes to Imposter Syndrome,and it is a funny thing because its not what you imagine you will feel when you are thinking about your future self being successful. Then when you do have successes you feel they are undeserved or unbelievable in some way.
I think that being a woman does influence my creativity or maybe the ability to have space for creativity.
I often feel my time to create my own work is being eaten into by the needs of others in my house, which can be frustrating. I guess I have to look at them as also being a work in progress.
How does your national identity influence your creatively?
This is an interesting question.
I grew up in North Carolina, so I am American, but maybe what is more relevant, because the US is such a big place, North Carolinian.
North Carolina has lots of trees, so I think my interior self has been influenced by this environment.
As I mentioned in an earlier question, I like to include trees in my illustrations, and I think that may have something to do with missing the North Carolina landscape.
Also, not having grown up in Ireland, I am aware of a cultural gap between myself and people who did grow up here. Some of the shared cultural connections and memories that native Irish people would have may be things I have never heard of before. I think sometimes the not knowing influences the questions I ask artistically and also thematically in my books.
Being an outsider lets me look into the culture with a different perception and that may influence my artwork.
